Timber harvesting results in patches of regenerating forest that are substantially different from surrounding unharvested stands, and provides an opportunity to investigate the effect of habitat change on forest fauna. In this thesis I used timber harvesting as an experimental treatment to investigate the effect of a changed resource base on the home range and resource selection of the swamp wallaby, Wallabia bicolor. I recorded habitat attributes at unharvested control, recently harvested (<12 months old), 5 year old and 10 year old sites. Initially, harvesting removed almost all above-ground plant biomass, although the nitrogen and water content of grass on recently harvested sites was relatively high. Five years after harvesting, sites were dominated by densely regenerating 1-3 m tall Eucalyptus seedlings. Relative to unharvested sites, there was substantial lateral cover and values of a forage quality index were high. In contrast, 10 year old sites supported dense, closed stands of 3-6 m tall eucalypt regeneration, had a moderate amount of lateral cover and had low values of the forage quality index. (For complete abstract open document)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245506 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Di Stefano, Julian |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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